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Show Up For Your Life Today

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Have you ever heard the term, "future tripping"? Future tripping is when
you are faced with a task and then you psych yourself out thinking about all of
the obstacles that lie ahead of you. In most cases of future tripping, you
become debilitated from ever even trying because of all the "what
ifs", the "but I've done this before and failed" the "it's
going to be impossible for me to do right now, why even try"? Future
tripping! I'm the most talented future tripper in the world. I give GAVE
my inner future tripper WAY too much control. Just GETTING myself to start things
that I know will be hard or maybe even impossible, before I psych myself out, used to be half the battle for me.

For those of you who don’t know what I’ve been up to these last 3 months, I’ve been following a
workout/healthy eating guideline called, “Body For Life”. The program is outlined
in a book that was written by fitness expert, Bill Phillips. It was a #1 new york times best seller the year it was published in 1999. The book itself is 15 years
old! Bill has helped millions
of people. Btw, I got my used copy of Body for Life for $4, on amazon HERE. ;)

January 2009

"Show up for your life today." – something my super
amazing Mom says often. It's the first time that I've honestly put that into
practice. I have tried over a dozen different diets/workout plans in the last 6
years, none of which I've stuck with or finished. None of them were long-term
solutions. They left me hungry and tired all the time and I constantly felt deprived.
More than that, none of those other program's PRIMARY focus was working on your insides before working on the outsides. I was never trying to be healthy, mentally and emotionally (even though I swore up and down that I was). It was all in vain.

(I'm using a lot of caps, sorry. This is one of those posts that I
think just NEEDS 'em ;) )

I had to metaphorically
SLAP myself in the face (sometimes I really wanted to actually slap myself in
the face and probably should have at times)! I took a long, hard look at
myself, I forced myself to go deeper than just the surface, to deal with the painful
reality and reasons for why I had let myself go from a once happy, positive and
healthy person…to barely being able to breathe when I walked up stairs, and continuing
to allow myself to cope in unhealthy ways. I was so angry and I kept it all inside. I buried it so deep. So that even I couldn’t find it.

Here are 5 realizations that I came to. That I HAD to come to
before I even began to think about knowing how to lose weight (haha, reminds me of
that line from the movie,'The Royal Tenenbaums' Gwyneth Paltrow’s character: “I
can’t even begin to think about knowing how to answer that question.” Love that
movie!).

Realization #1: Things have happened in my life that have been entirely
out of my control (that drives me crazy
at times and it's such a huge challenge for me. Accepting the things that I just can’t change...hard, hard, hard!). Things have happened that have changed
me as a person; changed the core of the person that I “thought” that I was. I just
broke. Everything I had envisioned my life to be just "wasn't" anymore. It was a battle that I chose to internalize and keep to myself. I didn't ask for help and I denied how hurt and how angry I really was. I
denied myself a chance to be happy because of these things that had happened and
THAT was just about the only thing that I did have control over, asking for help. but I couldn’t
see that in the thick of things. So I continued to suffer. Some things are just
plain gone from my 'heart vault' and I know and accept
that I will probably never get some of those things back. But I have come a
long, LONG way. I realized that the only way out of the pain that I was
feeling, was forgiveness: to forgive others and to learn to forgive myself. I
still have mountains to climb, but I AM and always will be, climbing.

Realization #2: I have lied to myself, one too many times. I went
against my own word so many times by starting and quitting things, that I had
stopped believing when I would tell myself that I could do anything at all and actually finish it. I didn’t trust myself anymore. So what I did was create a self-preserving mechanism of choosing to just live in complete denial. It was
just easier to pretend like I wasn’t a total liar, and that I didn't have any unresolved issues. Believe me when I tell you, I did not see an unhealthy, unhappy, 202-pound, overweight person when I looked in the mirror these last few years. I had phases of realizing the truth, but that never lasted very long. I went right back to being in denial. I created this facade because it was all just too painful to confront and resolve. No one ever expressed his or her concerns about my weight to me. I mean, who would!? "You're fat and I'm worried about you" isn't exactly the easiest thing to say to someone you love. I hadn't owned a full body mirror for 10 years and I kept myself so busy with building my photography business, starting a family and working on my marriage, that my health and my looks took the back burner. The way I looked was a direct reflection of the wreckage that had taken place on the inside.

I want to be very, VERY clear about something... I am in no way saying that just because someone struggles with maintaining a healthy weight means that they are broken inside! No no no no... I am speaking for myself. This was the case for ME. I didn't have any uncontrollable medical conditions that made it difficult/impossible for me to lose weight, like many people do. It was all stemming from that head and heart of mine! It sounds ridiculous
to me now that I could ever live in so much denial, but I did! I used to think that staying positive and just pushing through the hard stuff was the way to go, "That makes me a strong person" - a label I used to wear as a badge of honor. I was so wrong.I've learned that without properly dealing with my problems and RESOLVING them as they happen, I end up hurting much, much more when it surfaces at a later date without my permission.

Painful Issue: "Hey! remember me? Yeah, you thought you got rid of me? You just buried me and I climbed my way right out of there!...YOU SUCKER!"

I knew I had put on a
little bit of weight from having kids and over-eating "occasionally"
(*cough cough* - every day), but I chose to ignore how bad it really was. We visited
family back in November and a picture was taken of me and then posted to FB. I saw all of my sadness and anger in that one photo...and then everything I had worked so hard to bury, surfaced...And all at once. My insides - On the outsides.

Realization #3: That was the moment where the emotional & mental consequences of quitting on myself -- even one more time -- became more difficult and
painful to imagine than just actually putting in the work and doing what I
needed to do by accepting reality and becoming healthy again, starting with my heart
and mind. I suddenly became more afraid of not trying than I had been of failing and THAT was the beginning of true change for me.

Realization #4: I must learn to love myself unconditionally. Flaws and all. Before I
started this, my sister said to me, “Just remember that you are still you”. I love that women! (btw, my sister was the one who introduced me to BFL and I look
up to her so so much). Having a great
body is not going to make me happy. Yes, I will feel better in a lot of ways,
but if I think that somehow it could ever fix all my problems…I'm wrong. The important part of me, the ONLY part of
me that will live on when I die, will be my soul, and progress,
not perfection was what I needed to strive for, in ALL aspects of my life, not just this one. Love myself along the way, the way I am at that moment...not in a year from now.

Realization #5: I didn’t gain weight over
night. I wasn’t going to lose it over night. Slow and steady was what was going to be best for me. When talking about long-term
weight loss and weight management, There are no quick fix solutions that end up being a long-term solution. I have learned from experience that if a diet/workout plan claims
to help you lose more than 2 lbs. a week it probably isn’t a long-term solution
or even a healthy one! So I knew that if I wanted this to be a life-long
change, I was going to have to be patient and make this lifestyle something
that I could continue to do even after I finished the 12 weeks program. I wanted to cook healthy meals, not be told where to order meals. Do you think there
will be Nutri-system meals just lying around during the zombie apocalypse? Don’t
think so! ;) I was just going to have to finally do this the old-fashioned
way…Eat fresh, clean foods and exercise! It was hard to accept, but I was
much better off after finally accepting this as reality.

I wrote all of these things down in a journal and
read it every morning and every night for 1 week. I meditated all week until I was ready. I started on December 9th 2013. I went to the gym
Mon-Sat with my Charly Bear in tow and ate 6 small meals a day. When I first started, I was sore ALL THE TIME. It was enough at times to make me want to quit. I can proudly say that I didn't miss
one single work out for the entire 12 weeks. I taught myself how to cook
meals and make things from scratch. I missed a few of my meals, but not many. It took a few weeks to get used to eating less food, more often. I
ate about 90-95% clean Monday - Saturday and I never missed my free day. I ate whatever I wanted on that day. Eventually, my free day became less
about binging on junk just because I could, and more about eating my favorite
foods that were just not good to eat everyday. I saved money by eating at home and I started a personal blog! None of this has completely taken over my life, but it has become a top priority and something that I'm passionate about! I eat healthy and workout without even thinking about it most days now. That's pretty cool.

I cut my toe open and had to get stitches and a tetanus shot on the first day of my last week doing the program (which made my last few days difficult), but I limped to the finish line and made it!

This has all meant WAY MORE to me than just losing weight and getting stronger physically. The
greatest victory has been that I didn’t break my promise to myself and I'm earning my trust back.

I'm projecting that it will take about a year for me to reach my fitness goals, and I'm totally ok with that. Whats one year?! I'm actually excited to continue on. And trusting myself again? Nothing looks as good as that FEELS.

Here are my final stats: I started on Dec. 9th
2013 and I finished on March 2nd 2014. I never lost more than 1.8
pounds a week. I did not measure my body fat % before I started (I wish I had because I'd have a better idea of fat loss vs. muscle gain)